Search form

Peace Operations

After a more than a decade of continuous expansion, historic levels of demand and increasing operational complexity pose risks to the viability of peace operations. Setbacks in high-profile missions have coincided with military overstretch and growing fiscal austerity, while missions that have achieved interim stability lack a clear transition strategy towards sustainable peacebuilding and development. At the same time, the evolving use of a range of alternative models of peace operations, including the hugely expanded use of special political missions, is both creating new options and adding complexity to policy debates. At the UN and elsewhere, new questions about the relative merits of traditional peacekeeping versus lighter options create an ongoing demand for policy-relevant research. CIC aims to provide analysis on these issues and to improve conceptual and operational linkages across political missions, peacekeeping operations, and peacebuilding.

Related Publications

CIC has initiated a project to study external actors’ peacebuilding frameworks in Somalia. The purpose is to ascertain whether and how the international community is applying recent international learning on peacebuilding, and is able to forge coherent and effective approaches to helping countries pursue peaceful political settlements.

This new Routledge volume, edited by Marco Wyss and Thierry Tardy provides a comprehensive analysis of the trends and challenges of international peacekeeping in Africa. In their contribution to the volume, former CIC staff member Megan Gleason-Roberts and CIC Senior Program Officer Alischa Kugel analyze the changing dimensions of international peacekeeping in Africa, including how civilian-led political missions, regional deployments and over the horizon security guarantees are increasingly important tools for crisis response.

The number of wars and the deaths they cause have been steadily decreasing since the post-World War II period. But changes in both the nature of conflict and the degree to which it is broadcast to a global public have underscored the need for effective peacemaking, while also changing our approaches to achieving a stable peace. Richard Gowan looks at the U.N.’s shift toward aggressive and riskier peacemaking missions.

Past Events

Paige Arthur, CIC Deputy Director, was a member of a distinguished panel of peacebuilding practitioners for the Initiative for Peacebuilding through Education’s 2017-18 academic year kickoff event, “Has Peacebuilding Failed? The Shift to Sustaining Peace”. The event was held at the NYU SPS Center for Global Affairs on September 15, 2017.

The people of South Sudan is suffering under a terrible man-made catastrophe where millions have fled from their homes and many face starvation. Ending the three-year-old civil war is the first step to solve the crisis, but negotiations, led by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), have faltered.